Born in 1988 in Oita, Japan, Rina Nakano is an artist/photographer/translator whose works revolve around the themes of finding unorthodox alternatives to human communication in the contemporary age through performance, exploring possibilities of multilingual interplay, and questioning the notion of “self” through the nature of photography. Her cultural identity as Japanese has been examined through assimilation into U.S. customs for about 9 years since she first attended high school in Texas as an exchange student until she graduated from California State University, Long Beach with a BFA degree in Photography.

Her works deepen the most through experience in foreign countries where the presence of human encounters are highlighted by the friction of cultures and languages. In those moments, she finds humanity's bare zest for communication manifesting from the shadow of awkwardness. Since 2016, she has been exploring the possibilities of a polaroid camera as a communication tool. As this analogue gadget requires time and caution to maintain the quality of its resulted image, it shapes the relationship between the photographer and the subject in a way we seldom expect from contemporary digital photography.

Although she has been focusing on using the polaroid camera to take locals’ portraitures with interviews in Beppu, Japan, and Tainan, Taiwan - both during artist-in-residence programs - her latest work seeks to experiment with the materiality of polaroid film by uncovering the fragile skin of her grandmother.